The Falling of Snow
by Skylar Vega
Summary: Amazing what a minute can do. [MacStella]


**The Falling of Snow**  
by Skylar

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_The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.  
-- Oscar Wilde_

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The snow pours outside rapidly and it reminds Mac of those cheap snow globes they sell in every souvenir shop through the city. It's quick and the snowflakes are huge, but they're only white and beautiful as they dance around in the air - as soon as they hit the ground they mingle with the smog and the trash of the city and suddenly it's just a mass of black mush. As he stands by the window watching them fall he remembers his youth in Chicago, running through the park as the snow piled up, crafting perfect snowballs with his freezing hands and heaving them at his friends.

He thinks of Chicago still as that one place where life was innocent, where life was precious and careless. He thinks of New York as the death of that innocence, the end of youth and the birth of a lifetime of tragedy and darkness. He thinks of retirement sometimes, thinks of picking up his bags and going back home, but he rather let Chicago remain but an untainted memory in his mind. Ignorance was, more often than not, a great bliss.

Peyton walks over and stands next to him, linking her arm through his and resting her head on his shoulder. Something inside of Mac speaks to him of chivalry and tenderness, but he doesn't move.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

He nods, but doesn't have the heart to tell her all he sees as the snow falls is the black mass that mantles the roads and will, in a few hours, be the main cause of car accidents all through the city. As much as he values honesty, he doesn't want her to stand in front of open windows from now on and see what he sees.

"Dinner's ready," she says, her eyes big and bright and it doesn't hit him until now that all this time she's been in the kitchen, cooking. It's rare to have a night off to himself, let alone a night off together, and he knows she wants to make this special, tells him her demeanor and the bottle of 1994 Chianti that sits on the dinner table.

He joins her there, and there's two plates of spaghetti and chicken parmesan, and a basket of garlic bread. It smells wonderful and he smiles, trying to remember the last time he ate a home-cooked dinner. He can't.

"I know you hate English cooking," she says humorously. "I hope Italian's okay."

"Italian's good," he says and sits down. He wants to tell her about 15 year old Mac Taylor, delivering boxes of tomatoes and rosemary to a restaurant in Chicago's Little Italy, and being rewarded with the best food he's ever tasted in his life, but the lights are low and Peyton smiles as she pours him a glass of red wine, and he thinks he wants to leave that story for a special occasion.

So they toast to something generic and start eating, and though Peyton doesn't know much about Italian spices the food isn't bad at all. She talks about summers in Oxford and he listens, but has a hard time trying to picture her back home. He's always had a hard time picturing England, despite her picturesque descriptions. She's toyed with the idea of taking him there once or twice, but it's hard to schedule a night off together, let alone a whole two weeks, so the idea of visiting England remains just an idea. Sometimes he gets the feeling that Mac Taylor and England would not mix well, but he never tells her that, either.

The phone rings and they look at each other, and though he knows it's most likely work (because work is life and life is work) and he knows he should ignore it (she's been talking about this night for weeks) he finds himself reaching for it. She gives him a disapproving look that he'd rather miss, so as he answers the phone he looks down at his lap.

It's Danny, speaking quickly, his voice panicked and suddenly Mac forgets there's someone else there. He stands up, dropping his napkin on the floor. "Slow down, Danny, I can't understand a thing you're saying."

Danny takes a deep breath and tries again. "We were pursuing a suspect and Stella followed him into a warehouse, I lost sight of them and then they shot--the bastard shot her, Mac."

He doesn't know what to say or how to react and Danny isn't making things easier. His heart starts beating unbearably fast and he feels the rush of adrenaline and fear surging through him. Danny's speaking quickly and loudly and Mac keeps trying to interrupt him, but the young CSI's voice is quivering and he can't stop talking.

"Danny!" Mac yells loudly into the phone and that does the trick. Danny shuts up but his breathing is hard and labored. "Where are you?"

"On our way to Mount Sinai."

He doesn't finish the word before Mac hangs up the phone and his coat suddenly appears in front of him. He's got the keys in his hand and he's halfway through the door when a voice stops him and he finally remembers.

"What happened?" Peyton looks at him worried.

"There was an accident, Stella's in the hospital," he finds himself saying, and the words sound strange and strained coming out of him.

"Is she okay?"

"I don't know."

"I'll go with you."

His first reaction is to say no, but because it's rude and because he doesn't know why he feels this way, he lets her grab her coat and follow him downstairs, where they get in his car and head towards the hospital. The snow is black and covers the road and he has to drive carefully or they'll get into an accident, but he can't get Danny's voice out of his head and can't erase the image of Stella's blood out of his memory. He tries to concentrate on the road, but all he hears is the bang of a gunshot, the wails of sirens enveloping the city, the rumbling of the towers as they come down.

Every vibration, every siren, every emergency phone call takes him back and he drives faster, remembering the last time that he couldn't make it on time. Peyton tenses up next to him but says nothing and for that he's glad, because he doesn't know if he could make her understand that his own safety is the last thing on his mind and she wouldn't get it anyway. Some things are best left unsaid.

The emergency room at Mount Sinai is crowded and Danny's in the waiting room, pacing and raking his fingers through his short hair. There's blood on his clothes and he looks spooked and guilty. Mac approaches him quickly.

"Danny."

Danny looks at him and breaks down, approaching Mac like he's his lifeline. "Mac, thank God."

"Where is she?"

Danny's hands are shaking as he looks around, lost. "I don't know, they took her into some room, they won't tell me what's happening."

Mac puts his hand on Danny's arm, trying to look into his eyes but Danny's looking everywhere but at him. "Are you okay?"

"What?" Danny says incredulously. "Yeah, yeah, Mac, I'm fine."

"Good," Mac says. He walks him towards a set of chairs and sits him down, but Danny continues shaking regardless. "What happened?"

Danny sighs. "That Wilson case? We went uptown to talk to his brother and this guy just came out of nowhere, Stella started chasing him, I tried to keep up," he starts rambling quickly again. "Jesus Christ, Mac. It was a minute. Just one minute."

"Breathe, Danny. It's okay."

"I don't know how many times he shot her, when I got there she was on the floor, I shot him down," Danny continues. "Son of a bitch."

Mac looks around and sees Peyton there, and she looks worried, her arms crossed in front of her. There are injured people everywhere, sick kids and crying babies and Mac's always hated emergency rooms. As a doctor, however, she seems to fit here just fine.

"Maybe they'll tell you something, huh?" Danny says.

Mac looks at him and stands up, and though he knows he'll most likely get ignored he approaches the few nurses that are walking around. He looks back and Peyton is sitting next to Danny, her hand on his shoulder and talking to him, no doubt trying to make him feel better. Mac is glad, though somewhere on the back of his mind he wonders if Danny will make the connection and figure out that they're dating, but that doesn't seem important now. Using his badge he manages to enter the triage area, where he locates Stella's room quickly.

When a nurse sees him there she gives him a disapproving look but he flashes his badge and she retrieves. He approaches the gurney and before he can see her he can hear her bickering, and that instantly lifts a load off his back. There's blood soaked gauzes covering the floor and a few machines beep loudly around them. He sees her toes moving around and it hits him suddenly that she isn't seizing, but fighting off the doctors and nurses. Typical Stella, and this allows him to relax slightly.

"Who are you?" a doctor asks, and Mac flashes his badge again.

"Mac Taylor, crime lab."

"Mac?" Stella says, and in that moment of distraction the staff takes advantage and manages to put an IV line, to which Stella protests loudly.

Mac walks over, and she looks woozy and pissed, and when she sees him her eyes widen. Mac smiles, but she frowns and attempts to push one of the doctors away.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice is strained and her skin pale.

"Danny called me," he says, inspecting her wounds and there's a hole in her stomach that won't stop oozing blood. A doctor wipes the wound off, but a new flow of red begins to pour out again. He doesn't know much about medicine, except if the blood is red it means the bullet didn't perforate her liver. There are other organs to worry about, but he tries to put it out of his mind.

"Jesus," Stella says, staring at the ceiling incredulously. "I'm fine, Mac."

"Yeah?"

"Can you tell these people to leave me alone, please," her voice quivers.

Mac cocks his head to the side, trying to understand but he doesn't know why Stella is acting this way. "Why don't you let them do their job, okay?"

"I don't need this," Stella complains again, pushing a nasal cannula out of her nose.

"Stella, settle down and let the doctor treat you," Mac says sternly.

"I'm fine, Mac."

"You have a hole in your stomach," he says. "You're not fine."

Stella sighs and looks away, and it's the first time Mac realizes she's in pain and maybe arguing is her only way to deal with it. He finds her hand and gives it a squeeze and she squeezes back so hard he thinks he may lose a finger or two, but if it makes her pain more bearable he doesn't care. A nurse injects something into the IV bag and as the doctors continue trying to stop the blood loss her grip on his hand diminishes somewhat. The corner of her eye fills up with a tear and Mac wipes it away tenderly before it trails down her temple, but she avoids eye contact as he does so. Someone presses on her wound and she yelps in pain, and Mac wants to strangle the person responsible for it, but there's too many hands hovering over Stella to know.

She looks away, not wanting him to see her like this, perhaps, and Mac is filled with anger once more, and for a moment, just a moment, an irrational part of him is glad that Danny shot that bastard down.

Stella looks at him again, having regained some of her control, but she's breathing hard and her eyes are dulling, and Mac wants to believe desperately it's due to some medication they've injected into her and not the bullet finishing its job.

"Is Danny okay?"

Mac smiles. "He's fine. A little spooked."

"Tell him it's not his fault, okay?"

"You can tell him yourself when we get out of here."

She smiles, but the usual brightness and sparkle in her eyes are gone, and Mac doesn't want to go to that dark place, but a part of him has been there for the past five years anyway and it's easy to think the worst despite the evidence.

A doctor looks at him and motions him over and Mac looks down at Stella one more time before he lets go of her hand reluctantly and approaches the door. The doctor takes his gloves off and sighs. "Is she a cop?"

"Crime scene investigator," Mac clarifies. "How is she?"

"X-Rays are back. Looks like the bullet missed all the major organs; she's lucky," the doctor says. "But she keeps struggling and is losing too much blood as a result. Adrenaline rush. As soon as we stabilize her we're taking her to surgery to remove the bullet and make sure everything's in its right place."

"She'll be fine, then," Mac asks carefully.

The doctor nods, somewhat. "She needs to calm down first. If we can't treat her..."

Mac nods understandingly. "Thank you," he says and looks at Stella. There's a nurse trying to poke her with a needle, but she keeps pushing her hand away. Mac allows himself a moment of frustration before he walks over again. He grabs her hand and she relaxes a little, allowing the nurse to inject her with what Mac can only hope is a very strong sedative.

If it is, however, it doesn't affect her immediately and she continues to argue with him.

"I told Danny not to call you."

"He knows I would've fired him if he didn't."

Her cantankerous demeanor seems to disappear and she softens up slightly, though Mac doesn't know if it's a byproduct of the medication. "I didn't want you to worry."

"That's impossible," he says fondly.

Stella looks at him, inspects his clothes and frowns. "It's your night off."

"I'll have other nights off," Mac assures her. The nurses begin to lift the railing of the gurney and Mac stands back a little as they do so. Stella looks around, trying to figure out what's going on and Mac doesn't remember her looking this scared since Frankie died, though this time she's hiding it better. It tears his heart into two and he approaches her again. "They're taking you to surgery now, doctor says you'll be fine."

She sighs. "I told you," Stella says, smiling for the first time and Mac smiles as well, rubbing his thumb on the back of her hand.

"You can go home, Mac," she says tiredly, the medication finally taking its effect.

"I'm fine right where I am."

Her eyes close slowly and she opens them again, smirking at him and whispering playfully, "Go. Danny already got to see my panties. Don't think you're getting lucky, too."

Mac chuckles, and before they begin to wheel her out he leans down and plants a kiss on her forehead. He feels her hand on the side of his face and it's cold, sending shivers down his spine. He pulls back reluctantly and she gives him a tired smile before her eyes close and she's taken away. He stands there in the middle of the room, surrounded by blood and used equipment, until a nurse tells him he has to wait outside.

And the moment he leaves the room he feels fifty years older. His head feels heavy and his body drags, and he wonders when this will all end.

In the waiting room, Danny jumps from his chair the moment he sees him.

"How is she?"

"She's fine," Mac says. "Bullet missed all the organs; they're taking her to surgery now."

Danny breathes a sigh of relief, looking up at the heavens. "Thank God."

Mac puts his hand on Danny's shoulder and squeezes affectionately. "Why don't you go home, get some rest."

"Nah, I don't think I can sleep."

"Take a shower, then. Get something to eat. We'll be fine here."

But Danny just breathes out and pushes his glasses back, looking around the room tiredly.

"Danny, it's not your fault," Mac says.

"No, I know, Mac."

"Okay," Mac says. "Don't wanna go home? Go back to the lab, get the paperwork ready. IAB is gonna wanna talk to you, don't give them any trouble."

"Yeah," Danny says but is reluctant to leave, reluctant to walk away when he should've been the one to stop that asshole from loading his gun into Stella. "She gonna be alright, Mac?"

"Stella's gonna bury every single one of us," Mac says and Danny's smirk prompts him to smile. He stands there awkwardly for a few more seconds before he nods at him and nods at Peyton and finally walks away, and Mac watches him until Peyton is suddenly in front of him, smiling slightly.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Mac says and his voice is raspy. He looks at the floor. "Look, I'm gonna stay here, why don't you go home and get some rest?"

She looks at him, but he concentrates on the floor. He feels the pressure of two worlds coming together close and feels stifled, cornered. Danny's gone and there's no one else around but complete strangers and yet he feels the compulsion to distance himself, or distance her, keep her away from this other world that isn't work and isn't Peyton that he can't seem to recognize.

"I'll stay with you."

He says nothing, and she follows him towards the elevator, and minutes later he's pacing around the waiting room of the surgical ward like a caged animal. There are other people there, a worried family huddled together in a corner, a man and a woman praying by the atrium desk, a lone man in the dark, sitting still and staring ahead. Mac watches him, wondering who he waits for – maybe a sick father, maybe a careless friend, maybe a wife whose life is tittering on the brink of nothingness. He remembers again, remembers the chaos and the smell of debris that engorged the city for weeks, months, remembers the sense of frustration, of loneliness and betrayal, of anger and depression and helplessness, of acceptance. He tries not to go back there, knows that if he tries he could effortlessly hear the sound of Claire's voice in his head, telling him to let go, but it's hard not to when he realizes one pillar is gone and the other one is somewhere in the labyrinth of sterile rooms, getting a bullet drawn out and going back to the job to possibly get another one shot into her.

Everybody dies, sometimes twice or three times in a lifetime in a variety of forms. He knows and accepts this, but wishes now more than ever he could take that retirement and move somewhere nice and quiet, away from the bullets and the sirens and the violence.

Peyton chooses a comfortable chair by a vending machine and sits there while watching him, and in a nearby window she can peripherally see the snow still falling outside. Rationality tells her to go over and talk, hold his hand, offer him something but for the life of her she can't see herself doing that, seems somehow intrusive and for no reason that she can understand, so she sits there and watches, waits patiently until a doctor comes out and whispers something to Mac, and the way his eyes light up tells her everything she needs to know.

He's outside of Stella's room now. She's sleeping peacefully and he stands there by the window, watching and waiting some more. Peyton sits in a chair in the hallway, wondering what he's thinking and wondering if he's ever going to move, but she doesn't do much to quench her curiosity. She closes her eyes and falls asleep, and hours later opens them again and he's still in the same spot, his hand on the window, waiting for something she realizes even he doesn't know.

She wants to smile, wants to cross her arms in front of her and revel at the sight of Mac Taylor being a great boss and a great friend, but something tells her it's gone beyond that. So she takes a deep breath and looks around the empty hallway before she stands up. There's a crick in her neck that she gets rid off by stretching, and as she starts to make her way over he feels her there and looks back. The confused look on his face hurts more than she wants to admit.

"I think I'll head home."

He nods, putting his hand on her arm appreciatively. "I'll call you tomorrow."

She hesitates, knows this isn't the time and place. "Mac, I..." she stops herself because her voice sounds ridiculous when she speaks out loud. "I don't think..." she's interrupted by her own soft chuckle, and the frown on his face should make her mad, but it only makes her shake her head and look down. "I'm not sure that this is gonna work."

His frown intensifies and he straightens up. "What are you talking about?"

Peyton smiles, but the smile is bitter and she feels it all the way down to her heart. "I don't mind being second in your life, Mac. I really don't," she says calmly. "I don't care that you still love Claire. I don't care that you'll always love her. She's your wife, and I understand."

Mac shakes his head and looks around. "Then... I don't understand..."

"The problem is I'm not second in your life," she says, and as much as it hurts hearing it in her head, saying it out loud makes it infinitely more painful. "We both know that. I know I'll never be first. But I don't even make second, Mac. It's not fair, to either of us."

He looks around first, and Stella's presence in the next room hangs heavily over his head. "Look, if this is about my job, I told you..."

She shakes her head. "It's not about the job."

Mac stares at her, and she looks so calm he almost believes she's joking. But he realizes quickly the calmness is cleverly masking her resignation. He wonders where this came from, why here and now and how does he react to this? Too many questions he feels she won't answer tonight.

"If this is about our night off," he begins rationally. "My partner got shot, I can't just leave..."

"It's not about that, either," she says. "This is important and you should absolutely be here."

"Then," he chuckles softly, incredulously. "Why are you saying this? What happened between chicken parmesan and now?"

She smiles, staring at the knot on his tie because the look on his face hurts too much, reminds her of medical school and training students to tell their patients they're going to die. "I think... I realized I wanted you to be something you can't be. I wanted you to give me something you can't give me..." The realization begins to set for him and her as well, and there are tears stinging in her eyes but she blinks them away quickly. "I don't want to be second, Mac. I could accept being second, but I don't want to. Even if I would I can't. I'm not her."

"I don't expect you to be Claire," he says.

She chuckles lightly, shaking her head and looking at the floor, wishing she could feed him the answers but it's out of her jurisdiction now.

He continues to stare at her, trying to find the answers in her eyes but she doesn't give anything away. "I don't understand what you're saying to me."

"No, you don't. I know that, and I can't be mad at you for it," she says. "You'll understand some day, and I hope it's soon, Mac, because despite it all, I really want you to be happy."

She moves away but he stops her intuitively. "Wait, let's just talk about this. Let's go get a cup of coffee, or..."

"Mac, I'm..." she shakes her head, looking through the window and Stella is sleeping peacefully, unknowing, and her presence is too heavy. She smiles through it. "We're okay." He's still confused, but not completely surprised as she gets on her tip toes and kisses his cheek. "Give Stella my best."

He watches her go, and she knows he won't call after her and she knows it as well. She steps into the streets and thinks the falling snow is beautiful, while he stays inside with his hands in his pockets, thinking of loss and regret and her words echoing in his mind. He thinks he'll call her in the morning, get her to meet him for coffee and breakfast so they could talk, really talk, and possibly reunite, but a part of him knows, _knew_, that though her words made no sense they were right.

So he stays there because he has nowhere else to go, and when a nurse walks into Stella's room he just stands there and watches. The nurse smiles and says something and he then realizes Stella's waking. She still looks pale and weak but some of the shine is back in her eyes and her hair is loose and curly. She says something to the nurse and they talk for a while before the nurse leaves, and Mac is torn between letting Stella rest and going inside.

He feels her gravitational pull (he's never been able to fight it) luring him inside, and though it's clear she's halfway gone, she sees him and smiles warmly.

"Hey," she says cheerfully, too cheerfully, and he smiles.

"Hey yourself," Mac replies, setting his coat down. He looks at her and she looks so serene he has a hard time believing she's just been shot.

"Guess what they gave me," Stella says softly, like a child sharing an important secret. "Morphine. Lots of it."

She laughs at herself and Mac can't help smiling. "You're high, Stella."

"And I love it," she says wistfully, stretching her arms in front of her and suddenly staring at her fingers as if they were the most fascinating objects on earth.

"Enjoy it while you can."

"I intend to," she says calmly. She looks up at him, her eyes half closed, and as if something had just dawned on her she raises her hand and points a finger at him, only her eye-to-hand coordination is way off and she ends up pointing at the wall.

"Hey, Mac, you know what? You don't have to stay here. It's your night off, you had plans."

He puts his hands on his pockets and watches her, amused. "What makes you think I had plans?"

"You really kinda look like you had plans a little bit."

"I look like I had plans a little bit?" He's never seen Stella like this and he gets the feeling he's never gonna let her live it down.

"You're wearing your good shirt," Stella muses. "Good shirt and TV Dinners, they don't go together. You had a date."

Mac shrugs his shoulders. Her ability to read him even while wasted is impressive. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"Yes it does," Stella says. "You can still... I don't know, catch a movie or something."

"Stella, it's 1 am."

She frowns dramatically, staring ahead, confused. "What?"

"You were in surgery for a while."

"How while?"

He smiles. "A while."

The words still don't register in her head but she seems more interested in getting her disjointed point across. "Well, just... call her."

"Stella..."

She tries to wave him over unsuccessfully. "Let me talk to her."

"You can barely talk to _me_ right now."

"I'll explain everything."

He takes a deep breath and it dawns on him that he hadn't been able to do that in a while. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"Mac..."

"Stella, it doesn't matter anymore."

It takes her a while, between the haze of the heavy medication and his vague words, but finally she gets it. "Oh."

He looks away and the moment is awkward and tense and he doesn't know why.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"It's alright."

Stella looks at him and half smiles, her eyes still mellow. "Sit," she says, patting the small spot next to her on the bed a couple of times.

Mac obliges, if only because he doesn't know what a high and angry Stella looks like and he doesn't want to find out. He sits on the edge but she insists some more and he lays back onto the bed, half his body hanging off of it awkwardly and he wishes she would go back to sleep, but she merely scoots over a few inches, allowing him more room but also managing to send herself into a dizzy spell. He tries to stop her but there's no stopping Stella from anything.

"Mac, I'm gonna tell you something," she begins to say sloppily and he wants to laugh, but doesn't. "I'm gonna tell you something."

"I'm listening."

"Okay, listen," she says carefully. "If you like a woman, you have to tell her, right?"

"Right."

"So just tell her," she says like it's the most genius thought she's ever had.

"I think the mere fact that we'd been seeing each other implies I did that," he says rationally and doesn't know why, because in her current state of mind it's not like Stella can successfully converse coherently with him.

"Ah, but did you tell her?"

"Yes, I just said that."

"Ah."

He smiles again but it wanes as he looks down at his hands. He doesn't know why he's having this conversation with Stella now, when she's been just shot and is high on morphine, but talking to Stella, even in this state of mind, has always been an impulse. "We were just... not in the same page."

"Mac, Mac, Mac," she says incoherently, patting his chest and leaving her hand there. "Just turn your page."

He smirks at how simple it sounds, how uncomplicated, how effortless. All this time he's been trying to move on, trying to forget and find something special. He's always been aware of the fact that he'll never be able to recreate what he had with Claire. He'll never get that innocence back, that sense of power and invincibleness. He knows now, it was refreshed in his memory after tonight, how easy it is to lose it all. In just a minute. The blink of an eye and it's all gone. He'll never be that young again, that naïve, that idealist.

But he doesn't want to quit on the idea of having that feeling again, that overwhelming sense of confusion and euphoria and adoration and frustration that comes with a look or a touch. He isn't bitter enough to think that while he can't have all of it back, he can find some parts of it again. Companionship. Someone he can have a stupid conversation with while feeling smart and coherent. Conflict. Someone who will pick a fight with him for leaving his socks on the bedroom floor. Intimacy, trust, and comfort. Laughter. He wonders sometimes if it's too much to ask for and why some times, even when it's at an arm's length, he can't reach it.

"I'm sorry I ruined your date," Stella says suddenly, her left hand resting atop the bandaged new scar on her stomach, her right hand resting sloppily on him.

"You didn't ruin my date," he says, and he wonders for the first time if perhaps she did much more than that as he tries to decipher Peyton's words, but dismisses the thought quickly. "Just because you want something to work out doesn't mean it will or should."

"Yeah," Stella says understandingly, remembering Frankie, remembering the many guys before him, remembering the many times couples came into the orphanage looking to adopt and leaving her behind. She understands that more than anyone she knew.

Her morphine high suddenly starts to wear off and she deflates next to him, her head falling forward a couple of times until finally it lands on his shoulder. Mac looks down at her hand and remembers suddenly the blood on her tub, on her hardwood floors, the hundreds of cuts along her hands and arms. It makes him relive it all over again and he holds her fingers, looking through them and some of the scars have faded, some are still there. But he sighs and tries to put it on the back of his mind, tries to feel thankful, tries not to remember that the third time might be the charm.

Instead, he catches a glimpse of the snow falling outside and he smiles.

"Did I ever tell you I used to deliver boxes of tomatoes to an Italian restaurant back in Chicago?"

"No," she says dully, her words elongating. "Sounds fascinating."

"It was," he remembers fondly, ignoring her sarcasm. "It was my first job."

"Did you wear one of those newsboy caps?"

Mac smiles. "No."

"Too bad," she says. "Every time I picture you in Chicago I see you wearing one of those."

"I'm not much of a hat person."

"Too bad," she repeats. Her eyes close for a long time but she opens them again, and she feels his breathing on her ear, the faraway beating of his heart. The steady rhythm of it combined with the drugs make her feel like she's in another world and she smiles, closing her eyes. "What kind of tomatoes?"

"All kinds," he smiles. "And rosemary, thyme, cilantro -- little old lady used to give me free food and cannolis as a thank you."

"They paid you in cannolis? Mac, you're a sucker."

He chuckles. "It was just the owner's mother, she used to cook for me every once in a while," Mac says. "Little old lady, loud and cranky -- I think her name was Stella."

"No it wasn't," she chuckles sleepily and he laughs, and he doesn't know when was the last time he did, and he can't believe he's laughing with Stella merely hours after she was shot in the stomach. Except Stella has never been too logical and their relationship has never been conventional, so it doesn't surprise him but it somehow still amuses him. Very few people can hold his attention after three or four years, but Stella manages to find a new way to amuse him every day.

"I'm tired," she says next to him.

"Go to sleep."

She tries to raise her head off his shoulder, but suddenly her body weighs a ton and she can barely open her eyes. "You're gonna be okay?"

He frowns. "You're the one who got shot."

"You're the one with the tendency to brood."

Mac smiles. "I'll be fine."

She yawns and begins to drift off. "I'm sorry I ruined your date."

"It's okay." He finds it crazy that he's in a hospital bed with Stella and kissing the top of her unruly head. "Stop getting in the way of trouble and we're even."

She smiles and mumbles. "You know me, Mac."

"Painfully well."

Seconds later her breathing deepens and she's gone, and though he knows the nurse will most likely come back and kick him out, he lets his head fall on Stella's and his fingers protectively hold her own. He can't quite close his eyes without seeing all the blood, without hearing the beeping of the machines and the roar of the towers, so he concentrates on the beeping coming from the machine next to the bed, telling her Stella's alive and breathing and for the time being everything's going to be alright. He thinks of Peyton and tries vainly to bring meaning to her words, but it's impossible for a blind man to figure out the clearest path in front of him, and so he dangles somewhere between confusion and ignorance, where he's lived for the past five years, where he's found comfort, where he'll most likely stay until there's another phone call and another emergency and the tragedy of a realization that comes too late.

In the meantime, the snow continues to fall outside and Stella takes a deep breath in her sleep. Mac watches the snowflakes drop. Her fingers twitch in his hand and for the first time in years the sight doesn't bring to mind the image of black water and smog.

--The End--  
1/06/07


End file.
